


All Too Well

by mouseratstan



Series: How To Be Something You Miss [3]
Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Angst, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, College AU, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Lots of Angst, Proposals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:29:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseratstan/pseuds/mouseratstan
Summary: Ben is ready to commit. Leslie is worried that her life is moving too fast."Maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much/or maybe this thing was a masterpiece til you tore it all up."
Relationships: Leslie Knope/Ben Wyatt
Series: How To Be Something You Miss [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684519
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	All Too Well

Ben Wyatt first wanted to kiss Leslie Knope when he was eight years old. He first wanted to tell her he was in love with her when they were seventeen, and he got his acceptance letter and planned to move to Partridge, Minnesota. If he had told her then, maybe things would have been better. He would certainly have had more time with her.

Ben tells Leslie he loves her for the first time when they are twenty years old, and he still loves her at twenty-three. They have a tiny apartment together in Pawnee, and they're taking on the world. They're in grad school, Ben is working in accounting and Leslie is finally rising and making a name for herself in the Parks and Recreation Department. Ben has no doubt that Leslie Knope will be President someday. He’s already decided he wants to be with her when that happens.

She’s been so stressed lately, and all Ben wants to do is make her feel better. He bought a ring months ago. He's just been waiting for the right time.

Ben and Leslie sit in Ramsett Park, and she's in her work clothes, looking around for raccoons. There will be a kid’s baseball game coming up soon, and the last thing she wants is raccoons ruining the beauty of her beloved parks and terrorizing the children. It's December, and freezing cold, and Ben can't imagine why there would be a game or raccoons around this season, but he's far past the point of questioning Pawnee. Ben has come along for moral support. He wants to provide physical support, but Leslie Knope is an unstoppable force of energy and when she wants to do something, she will do it herself.

Ben should have noticed the stress in her face, the way she hunched, how she talked too fast that day. Instead he sees how beautiful she looks when she's determined to get something done. He sees her anger and misplaces it, turns it towards the raccoons. The sun is setting and the sky is a beautiful pink and orange and love has blinded Ben, and if he just looked a little closer, paid a little bit more attention, he might have seen the signs.

“Leslie, take a break,” he calls out to her, unable to help but fiddle with the tiny box in his pocket. “We've been out here for hours, babe, and it's freezing and I want to talk to you.”

“You can still talk to me!” she insists, her voice strained and high-pitched. “We can talk while I work! I really need to keep these stupid raccoons away, Ben, I don't want to lose my job.”

Ben sighs. He's met Leslie’s boss, an odd man named Ron Swanson, and he couldn't see Ron firing Leslie at any point. They didn't see eye to eye on most things, but Ron would never really fire her. She's being paranoid, because she's exhausted and life has become something of a whirlwind, and Ben just wants to give her a reason to relax, to smile again. It feels like it's been so long since he's seen her smile genuinely. 

“You're not going to get fired, Leslie,” he says, acting as the voice of reason. And, before he can lose his nerve, he rushes over to her and grabs her elbow, spinning her around to face him. Her eyes are wide, and he loses himself in how blue they are. He leans down to press a kiss to her lips, which she leans into. She's holding something back. Ben doesn't notice this. He continues anyway.

“Okay,” she breathes, but she doesn't touch him except by their lips. “Okay, you want to talk. I'm listening.”

Ben just continues to kiss her, as if doing so will make him gain his strength back, give him the confidence to just do it. His fingers slip into the light blonde of her hair and even when she's stressed, kissing Leslie is like kissing the sun. He's looking directly into it and it burns, and in his eyes he sees stars, but he's addicted to it; he can't look away until he peels back all those shining layers and sees the sun for who she really is.

After too long, she pulls away. “What are you doing?” she whispers, and when he takes this invitation to get down on one knee, she chokes. “Oh my god, what are you doing?”

“I'm thinking about my future,” he says, pulling out that box and flipping it open to reveal the ring, bought so many months ago. He's been wanting this for so long, why wait? “I know we're young, Leslie, and I know life is hard right now. But I've told you before and I'll tell you again: I want to do it all with you. I want to wake up next to you every day for the rest of my life. I want to eat waffles with you for every meal of the day and I want to kiss you when you're feeling down, cuddle you when you're having a hard day. I know right now we’re both struggling to make ends meet but there's no one I would rather do this with than you.” He takes a deep breath, and takes a chance by looking into her eyes. She's crying freely, which he expects, seemingly frozen in time. “So. Leslie Knope… will you marry me?”

Leslie sees, in her eyes, every choice she's ever made in her life. She stands painfully still and though she wants to look in Ben’s eyes, that might be better for her, she can't stop looking at the ring in his hands, can't stop thinking about what he said: I'm thinking about my future. She wants to think of the future, but she thinks of the past. She sees Ben in every memory.

She sees them driving in the streets of Pawnee, just to get out of the house. She sees the way they make each other laugh so easily, how she makes fun of his driving, how her hair tangles up in the wind when they roll their windows down. He runs his fingers through it and they get stuck.

She sees the two of them when they go to visit his parents, who have since moved back to Partridge. She sees Steven and Julia Wyatt and she sees Henry Wyatt and Stephanie Wyatt and a unity quilt that Leslie made before they split ways for college, with promises of best friends forever. She sees herself laughing over baby pictures of Ben and sleeping together in his childhood bed. She sees the two of them in their apartment, eating midnight snacks, dancing together with all the lights off.

Leslie looks to the past, and then, unable to look away from the ring, she tries to imagine the future.

When she thinks of the future, she's only been able to see one thing: work. Her ambitions, her projects, her hopes and dreams. She tries to imagine a future where, along the way, Ben is there. She pictures herself saying yes to his proposal and him slipping the ring onto her finger. She imagines them saving up for years, maybe, for a proper wedding, and then even longer for a house, one day a family. She imagines putting every plan on hold for him, and him for her, and then something hits her so forcefully it nearly knocks her over.

Leslie never answers Ben’s question. She just runs.

Ben watches her, the way she tears her eyes forcefully from the ring, and runs faster than he's ever seen her. He doesn't move as she stumbles along the slick cold grass of Ramsett Park, he doesn't call out for her as she gets into her car and starts to drive away.

It doesn't even hit him until it's an hour later and she still hasn't returned, and he's still on one knee, his pants leg wet from the icy grass. He doesn't remember crying, but his cheeks are damp, and his head is spinning.

The next hour is spent calling Leslie over and over again, just for her to never answer, it goes straight to voicemail every time. The sixth time she doesn't answer, he starts to text her.

'Leslie? Where are you? Are you okay?’

'Leslie. What happened?’

‘Talk to me, please. I need to know what happened.’

'I'm begging you, please, say something? I can't do this without you.’

By the time Ben finally reaches their shared apartment, she isn't there. All of their stuff is, and nothing has changed, like she hasn't been here at all. He drinks in her scent and stares at her pictures and for a moment, he pretends like it’s all a bad dream, that any minute now Leslie will come out of the bathroom and she’ll kiss him and everything will be okay, because why would she leave him? Why would she run away and not say a thing?

She doesn't come back that night. Ben can't bring himself to sleep in their bed, or to sleep at all. He sits on the couch and he waits, staring at the front door or staring at his phone, waiting for her name to pop up or the sound of keys unlocking the door. Neither come. Not for several days.

It's the fourth day of no contact that his phone rings and Ben almost doesn't catch it. He hasn't showered and he’s barely moved from his spot on the floor. He hasn't once cried. He's still waiting for this to hit, or for it to turn out to be a nightmare, because there’s no way this is reality, it's too terrible to even imagine.

He catches his phone in the last seconds of the ring tone, and it's her name. He gasps it into the phone as soon as he brings it to his ear. “Leslie.”

“Ben,” she says, and he notes the distinct lack of emotion in her tone, very carefully controlled, very business-like. “Hi.”

“Oh my god, Leslie.” Ben has pictured this moment over and over again for the last several days, prepared a speech to give to her that might get his questions answered, but facing her now, hearing her voice again, he forgets all of it, as if he doesn't know how to speak at all. He's choking. “Please come back.” The words are soft, broken, it doesn't sound like him.

If Leslie has any sympathy at all, she doesn't let on. “I can't do that,” she tells him. “I only called to tell you that I'm moving out. Back into my mom’s house. You can keep the apartment if you want, but I'll be back to get my stuff.”

Ben wants to be strong, to sound as emotionless as her, to pretend like he doesn't care. But Ben has never been able to bounce back as easily as Leslie. When things hit him, he stays down, and when his emotions come out, they're released in full force. He wants to stay calm, but instead he bursts into tears that Leslie is not there to wipe away. “Please, please tell me what happened.”

There’s a slight pause on her end. “I'm just not ready, Ben,” she says, and the way she says his name is different than any time he’s heard it before. “You want me to be honest? We’re only twenty-three. We have our whole lives ahead of us. I don't regret being with you, not for a moment. You taught me a lot. But in the end, I have to focus on other things. My career. Finishing school. I can't get married right now.”

“I can wait for you,” he whispers, his grip on the phone slick with sweat. “Let me wait for you, however long it takes.”

“I don't want that,” she insists. “And you wouldn't either. It's over, Ben.”

The phone clicks, and just like that, Leslie is gone. Those last three words rattle in his brain over and over again, and he knows he will never be able to get them out of his head. He has to go. He has to leave this apartment, even Pawnee, forever and ever, and pray there will be some way to one day get over the worst heartbreak of his life.

He throws the ring he bought for her out the window and runs out the apartment door. He decides he won't return until after Leslie leaves to get her stuff. He needs to avoid seeing her face. He doesn't know what will happen to him if he sees her.

Leslie returns to the apartment later that night, and Ben is nowhere to be seen, even if all his stuff is still lying around. She walks past it, refusing to touch a thing, searching through her drawers and getting ready to pack. It's a hurried job, separating all their clothing and their shared memories, but one that she tells herself has to be done. She doesn't take one look back as she leaves, closing the door behind her with a large exhale.

This is for the best, she tells herself. It will get better from here.

A week later and she still finds Ben’s things in hers, all of which she promptly sends back to him without a single note. But a certain item of clothing makes her pause, the first one to do so.

Deep in the depths of her drawer at her mother's house, she finds Ben’s Letters to Cleo tshirt that she stole years ago, when they first got together. One hand moves to push the shirt into the pile of things to return to Ben, but something makes her stop. She can't do it.

She brings the shirt up to her face and only then does she cry for the first time. It smells like Ben still, and she remembers how she used to return it to him only so he can wear it for a night and have it be stolen again, so that every time she put it on, it would smell like him all over again.

The shirt smells like Ben and it smells like simpler times, when it was easy to be reckless and life could be taken one step at a time, when no one was thinking of life goals and five year plans and she didn't live feeling like every second was important. She feels the weight of the entire world, now, on her shoulders, but she didn't then. It was so easy to be brave back then, so easy to say “screw it” and kiss Ben Wyatt by the river.

Leslie wipes away her tears and shoves Ben’s shirt back into her drawer. She can't get rid of it. It's the only thing she will allow herself.

And then she stands up. And she moves on.


End file.
